It's been a long few months. In my last post, I talked about the difficulty I was having with keeping on track to reach my goal. Needless to say, I fell off the wagon and did so pretty hard. I could make a million excuses for myself, but there's no excuse valid enough to warrant giving up entirely. I would have a bad day, which I would just shrug off. Then in turned into two days. Then a week, a month... It just got to the point that I stopped trying, which is really sad because I had been doing so well. I had lost 21 pounds before I gave up - which I gained all but four back.
I thought about deleting my blog because I felt like an utter failure. Who would want to read a blog about weight loss when the writer couldn't commit to the goal? I changed my mind in the end (as you can obviously see). I decided that this is a learning curve, a hurdle that I must overcome and if someone does actually read this, maybe, just maybe, it'll help them too. I'm going to make errors - that is human nature. As long as I learn from them, I'm still going in the right direction.
I'm coming to the end of my third week of a better diet and exercise. I've been working hard to re-lose the weight I gained back. So far, I'm down 14.9 pounds from my original starting weight (10 pounds since starting again). Once I lose the rest of the weight I've gained these last few months, I'll feel so much better about myself. It really sucks knowing that I worked so hard to lose the weight in the first place only to have to start all over again.
I'm doing a couple things differently this time around. For instance, I'm not "eating" my exercise calories - meaning, when I burn calories through exercise, I don't eat more food because the exercise I completed put me under my calorie budget for the day. I just pretend that the exercise didn't make a change in my budget at all. I feel that it makes me less tempted to eat unhealthy things. Another change I made is that I'm staying away from my weaknesses. Last time I would allow myself to eat bad things because I had been doing "really good" for the day/week or because I'd exercised a lot which lowered my calorie intake number for the day. With me, I can't just have a bite or piece of something, I have to consume the whole thing or get the largest possible size - which clearly doesn't help my waistline. I feel that by staying away from those things that tempt me, I'm less likely to cave in and have more than I should have. On that note, I do know that I can't forbid myself to eat the things I love because that only causes a person to break down and binge eat. When I do decide to let myself have a treat, I'll just have to exercise self-control to ensure that I'm being reasonable about what I'm eating.
So far I've done really well. I've only had two days in the last three weeks where I went over my daily calorie budget. The days, however, were back-to-back last week and they were more than just a little over. I definitely noticed an impact from those two days on my weight loss and I made sure to do better this week. In addition to eating better, I've also been going to a walk four or five times a week. This week I added some light weight and floor exercises.
All in all, I'm feeling much better about myself and more confident in my abilities. I feel that I can do it this time around. Enough is enough. Wish me luck!
